


point of contact

by bygoneboy



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-13 04:36:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15356397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy
Summary: Post RE6. Another fix-it, about six years late.The body is under a white sheet when Chris walks in. The tag on his foot-- the only part of him visible-- has his name and rank: 1LT NIVANS, PIERS, and when Chris sees it he can’t move, or think, and he just stands there in the open doorway with the lights off, and waits for it to feel real.It never does.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this one goes out to deansparkles, who wrote [crossed out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6774688/chapters/15484186) and consumed my entire soul

The body is under a white sheet when Chris walks in. The tag on his foot-- the only part of him visible-- has his name and rank: 1LT NIVANS, PIERS, and when Chris sees it he can’t move, or think, and he just stands there in the open doorway with the lights off, and waits for it to feel real.

It never does.

Eventually he moves to the chair they’ve left for him, next to the gurney. They’d warned him that the body was bloated. Grossly mutated, heavily burned, beyond recognition. He doesn’t lift the sheet to look. He doesn’t want to see him like this. It’s not how he wants to remember him.

Doctors pass by the window every now and then, and somewhere in the back of his mind Chris knows that they still have work to do. No doubt the BSAA will want to examine the remnants, perform an extensive autopsy, take him apart cell by cell. But for now they leave him alone. They give him time. Maybe they know that at the end of it all, before the doors had locked and the pod had launched, time was the one thing Chris didn’t have.

He talks. To the empty husk that Piers used to be, to himself. He cries into his hands; he can’t look, he can’t bring himself to look. He can’t bring himself to touch him.

And then there’s just nothing left to say.

The sun was just beginning to rise when he’d gotten the call-- the facility’s parking garage is flooded with light by the time he forces himself to stand, and turn his back on a man he’ll never see again, and walk out of that room and into the living world again. Everything about it is surreal, disjointed; he feels hollow, like he’d gutted himself and left it all next to a body that should still be breathing. He makes it halfway down the garage stairwell before his legs give out; he sits hard, head spinning. He takes the badge out of his pocket, and worries it between trembling fingers. For a minute he thinks he might actually throw up. Then he takes out his phone, and dials the only number he can think to call.

“Claire?” he says when the ringing has stopped, his voice too small to sound like his. “They found him.”

 

◌◌◌

 

He hasn’t been cleared for field work yet. They’d released him from the quarantine pen when his toxin scans and blood tests came back clean, a few days after he’d washed up in the China seas. But before he could walk out the door one of the doctors had pulled him aside to talk about grief, holding a stack of fliers to his chest. “I’ve already been through this,” Chris had said, thinking of Jill.

“Does it feel any easier?” the doctor had asked.

So he’d taken the fliers.

Only one of them had really caught his eye: a counseling group that meets on bi-weekly evenings, in one of the conference rooms of a local college. It’s open to a variety of branches and veterans, not only BSAA but the marines and the DSO, too. Chris even considers asking Leon along-- he’d been close with Adam Benford, and he’d reportedly taken that loss hard. But his phone goes straight to voicemail when Chris calls, and when he asks around Capitol Hill, he hears that Leon’s already taken another job.

They all have their own ways to cope. If Chris could be out in the field, he would be. If Claire hadn’t cleared out his liquor cabinet, he’d be doing that too.

Instead he knocks back his prescribed cocktail of antidepressants, signs up for those group meetings, and enrolls in cognitive therapy.

The box of personal effects turns up on his desk, about a week after that.

The private that delivers it from the mail room doesn’t make eye contact, just stares at his shoes and salutes, waiting to be dismissed. Chris opens it when he’s alone again, without preamble. Piers’ uniform, presumably, was unsalvageable; Chris still has the badge he’d torn off, bloodstained and faded. Inside of the box is an assortment of things, mostly standard-issue: his dog tags and civilian ID, inoculation records, a small leather wallet. There’s a little box with a watch inside, expensive and never worn. A gift receipt is still attached, purchased under Piers’ name. It’s unclear who it was meant to be for, or why.

The manila folder lying at the bottom is inconspicuous. Hidden haphazardly beneath everything piled on top, so unassuming that Chris nearly misses it entirely. It’s lightweight, plain, ordinary. He flips it open, frowning, shaking out the contents--

His chest feels, suddenly, like it’s been clapped in irons.

The photos are copies, mostly, although there are a few originals. They’re dated years ago, now-- air force, STARS. There’s a snapshot of Chris with Barry, slumped over a barstool, grinning up at the camera with a beer in their hands. There’s another of him with Jill, her hat on his head, his aviators shading her eyes. There’s some early BSAA stills. A couple of the group photos have Wesker lurking somewhere in the background, too-- but he’d always been adverse to having his picture taken, either vain, or good at covering his tracks, or both.

There’s just one, single photo of the two of them, together. Chris remembers taking it, having it taken-- a few weeks before Edonia, months after Marhawa, when Piers had been promoted. Chris’s arm is draped around him, casual and easy. Piers is saying something close to Chris’s ear, not paying attention. They’d been in a few drinks, by then, and more than that moment Chris remembers the cab ride back to the base after the bar had closed, how Piers’ head had rested heavy on his shoulder, breath warm and booze-tinged, nose nudging at the line of his jaw.

They’d stumbled back to the officer’s cabin together. Chris had passed out on his cot while Piers had fallen asleep on the couch, slumped face-down, one arm tucked up beneath his head, the other holding Chris’s jacket closed around him. When they’d woken up half past ten, they’d been sporting matching hangovers, and they’d grinned at each other, then winced in unison-- and gone down to the mess hall, where Alpha team had picked on them mercilessly until the orders came in from the top, handed to Chris in the middle of breakfast, his smile fading as he pulled the letter from its seal, the pretense of normalcy shattered for good.

Forty-eight hours later, they’d been on a plane to Europe.

And he doesn’t need a reminder of everything that had come after that.

He takes the box to Piers’ parents. And he hands it over along with the notification of death, and watches their faces crumple, and tells them he did everything he could, and tries to believe it.

But he keeps those photos.

The funeral, held two weeks later under the mid-October sun, is empty-casket.

No one has to ask why.

 

◌◌◌

 

Time passes. The way it always does: ruthlessly, in spite of, regardless. Chris sits at his desk from nine to five, and signs whatever requests pass over it. He reads field reports of missions he wasn’t a part of, and waits to be useful again. He goes to therapy; he meets with a grief counselor. They talk about Jill, and about Wesker. He talks about his parents-- the car crash, the aftermath, raising Claire on his own.

He spends more time with his sister. He gets a gym membership. He learns how to cook, he takes walks when he can’t focus, he fills his fridge with more than just beer. He doesn’t stop drinking, not completely. He at least stops drinking himself to sleep.

And then suddenly it’s July 1st again, the one year mark, and Chris finds himself back at Piers’ grave.

He goes alone. It’s a private thing, this heartache; private, like they had been. Despite everything they’d been through together, despite everything they’d done and said-- Chris sometimes feels like he’d never really known Piers. Or that he’d only ever known parts of him, only the parts he cared to know. Sitting in the long, cool, shade-dappled grass in front of his tombstone and nursing a guilty, just-this-once flask of whiskey, he wonders whether Piers had ever felt the same way about him.

But Piers had never been afraid to walk away from protocol. To say what he thought, to push back when Chris pushed first. He wonders what Piers might’ve done if he had breached the gap and gotten close, if he had chased the way Piers sometimes looked at him, only ever in dark tap-room corners. He wonders whether that would have been a rule Piers thought was worth breaking-- a few beers more, or a few less, it doesn’t matter. Everything that had mattered back then is buried now, anyway, or should be. Six miles out to the morgue, where his corpse has been cut away and picked apart. Six miles out from China’s coast, where Chris still dreams of crushing water, and everything that they had left unsaid.

If they had both made it out, that might have changed.

If they had both made it out-- _God, if only he had made it out--_

If only Chris had never insisted that they go after Ada, or whoever she really was. If only they had turned back before staying meant suicide; if only Piers had listened, given up that part of him that couldn’t help being brave. It would have changed everything and nothing. The missile still would have hit the city. Piers still might have taken the strain. The two of them would have sank, undoubtably, torn apart by Haos or by the animalistic thing Piers was rapidly becoming--

But at least they would have gone together.

He’s always been stubborn. He’s never been the type to recognize a lost cause-- not with Jill, and not now. Maybe it’s because Piers had refused to give up on him, even in the long, bitter months post-Edonia. He had saved Chris, then. Even before China, before death by drowning: he had pulled Chris up from the pitfall he’d made of himself the moment he’d walked into that bar, and Chris isn’t sure how to reconcile knowing this now with the fact that he’ll never really be able to thank him.

Saying these things out loud, the grief counselor says, is a good first step.

But sometimes, sleepless and hatefully sober, the only place Chris wants to be is in that same watery grave.

That’s something he’s careful not to tell anyone.

He uncaps the flask again. This time he tips a little whiskey out on the grass, for the empty casket-- thinking too late how Piers would hate it, how he would, undoubtedly, hate all of this, the reminiscing, the unending mourning. It would’ve driven him crazy, in life. In death, it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine Piers cussing him out from heaven, if he’s watching.

Chris grins at the thought, craning his neck back to stare up at the branches overhead. “Cheers,” he says out loud, lifting the flask to the cloudless sky above aimlessly, and he pours out a little more-- sure, what the hell, maybe he’s actually trying to piss him off, from beyond the grave.

He wouldn’t, he thinks, altogether mind being haunted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a frickignin mess but no betas, too much plot, we die like men

The facility’s front hall is quiet. The air is cold, sterile; it doesn’t smell like it should, like death. Like a tomb, bodies lining the hallways, black blood drying against the walls. The red emergency lights have flickered on with the back-up power, but it’s still too dim for them to see clearly. Chris watches Santos sweep her flashlight up and down the corridor, slowly, one hand held up in a fist, _wait._

After a moment, she uncurls her fingers, open-palmed, signals, _clear._

The team creeps forward, quiet, bodies tensed, shoulders hunched to their ears. Next to Chris, Harris adjusts the brim of his helmet nervously, tipping it back, out of his eyes. It looks loose on him-- he needs to be re-outfitted, Chris thinks. Either that, or he needs to keep a closer watch on his things. He has a funny feeling the SOU vets have been messing with him the way they always do with rookies: replacing his gear, switching out the code to his locker combination.

There’s five of them, now. Ramin and Evans have transferred in from another unit. Santos and Harris are fresh off the recruitment boat. Just a few years ago, Chris wouldn’t have bothered with icebreakers, or training exercises-- he would have thrown them in the thick of it, right off the bat. You could only learn how to survive in this line of work by doing it first-hand. He’d been dead certain of that.

His men had just been dead.

And after China...

There'd been some pushback from the higher-ups. There aren’t very many BSAA recruits these days; expanded media coverage of their fieldwork meant a dramatic decrease of willing bodies. With the footage of the attack on New York, even hardened marines began to balk at the idea of working in bioterrorism. Chris has had trouble selling the dream for a while-- _a safe America, a safer world,_ a casualty list. A bloodstained badge in his palm. One photo, framed now, sitting front and center on his desk—

There’s a soft whirr from above them, breaking his train of thought, and Chris shines his flashlight up toward the ceiling. A faint thin fog is beginning to fill the air, spreading out from the ducts in the ceiling, ghosting above their heads. “A-virus,” whispers Santos, eyes glinting in the dark as she looks back at him from over her shoulder. “Captain?”

“Gas masks on,” Chris answers, pulling his own over his head; the rest of the squad follows suit, methodically. Even with its prime architect out of the picture, the BSAA’s North American branch has had significantly increased exposure to the A-virus and its black-market counterparts. They’re mostly pretenders, copycats hoping to perfect Glenn Arias’s vision— but they’re almost always deadly, however they differ from the real deal. Chris is familiar with it at this point, the way he’s grown beyond familiar with the C-virus and the J’avo strain. Something worse will come along. Something worse always does.

The sound of their breathing amplifies inside of the masks, their exhales hissing mechanically as the poisoned air is purified through the ventilators. Their boots squeak on the condensation misting over the tiles at their feet. “You think they have operatives in the building?” Harris asks, hushed as they make their way toward the double-doors at the end of the hall.

“Who else could’ve activated the ducts?” says Santos, her back to him. “They could have eyes on us, for all we know.”

“I haven’t seen any cameras.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t been _looking_ for cameras--”

“It could’ve been remotely accessed,” Chris interrupts, easing the quickly-building tension. “Or set on a timer, or motion sensors.”

“Then we should focus on finding the others,” Santos says, like a question.

“And keep an eye out for more traps,” whispers Harris, queasy under the mask. “They could’ve rigged it up like a fun house in here— just like that job you pulled in Mexico, Captain. Or the site in China, with all those rigged explosives--”

Chris sees Evans and Ramin exchange a look from up ahead; one of them snorts, poorly disguised as a cough. “What the hell are you talking about, rookie?” hisses Santos.

“The Neo-Umbrella facility. In Lanshiang? I read his reports, there was this woman--”

“Harris,” says Chris wearily, “focus.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

He nods to the double doors. “Santos, I want you to take point. You and Harris will sweep the next room together, and Evans and Ramin will follow up right behind you. Evans, I’m your last line of defense here, so you watch his blind spots like a hawk, got it?”

Evans nods, dropping back; Santos and Harris take the approach together. At the left side of the door Santos slows, kneels, and Harris pulls up short behind her, readying himself before he taps twice at her shoulder. They slam through the doors in one fluid movement, rifles up and trigger-ready, side-by-side.

They have a good rhythm, the two of them. A steady consistency, and even if they do tend to bicker sometimes, they make a first-rate team. Chris has always thought they might. He’s had his eye on the both of them for a while, now-- Santos had come straight from civilian crisis response, and so she’s nearly unshakable. Harris is a little greener, only a few years out from basic, but Chris had seen him shoot, passing through the base’s range on a weekend, on a whim. He’d caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. And the way Harris had handled the gun, the ease in his shoulders, his profile, at just the right angle, in just the right light...

He’s a damn good marksman. He deserves a spot in the SOU.

_You saw him and thought he was a dead man._

He’s always trying to forget.

“Clear,” says Santos, easing up the grip on her gun.

“Clear,” Harris echoes, doing the same, and they move into the next hall, and proceed the same way: methodical, swift. The team is narrowed in and sharp-eyed but Chris can hear Harris’s breathing pick up over the headset by the time they reach the lab. It’s deserted, too. They’ve gone twenty minutes without a trace of anything remotely hostile.

“No sign of a struggle,” says Evans, softly. “No sign of Bravo team, either.”

Harris readjusts the rifle at his shoulder. The flashlight beam spins wildly over the walls. “Maybe we missed something,” he says, an unsteady wave in the pitch of his voice. “If we double back--”

“No way,” Santos cuts over him, her voice flat. “We’re here, let’s just torch the virus data and go.”

“But if they’re still out there--”

“She’s right, Harris.” Ramin clips his gun to his side, moving towards the rows of laboratory equipment in the center of the room. “If they’re not here already, they’re not coming. Evans?”

The specialist hurries over, slinging his pack off one shoulder. It’ll take a few minutes for him to prime the explosives; in the meantime, Harris looks to Chris, his eyes wide. “Sir?”

“They’re following mission parameters,” says Chris, counting his bullets. “Getting you all out of here in one piece is my priority, so you have a case to make, then make it quick.”

“We can't just walk away. What if they need our help?”

“If they ran into trouble, it’s already too late.”

“But we don’t know that’s what happened--”

“They’d do the same for us,” offers Evans, looking up from his work. "If our roles were reversed--"

“That doesn’t mean it's right!” Harris yanks his gas mask off. The pulse in his throat, beneath the clasp of his too-big helmet, is beating fast and out of rhythm. “I’m doubling back.”

There’s a chorus of protests, immediately. Evans jumps to his feet, pyrotechnics forgotten; Santos starts toward him, one palm raised, placating. “Keep your head,” says Ramin, “stay with me, rookie, all right? Let’s not panic, we’re doing fine.”

“You blow the data, I’ll do another sweep--”

“Captain,” Santos turns on Chris. “He can’t go off on his own, you can’t let him--”

“It’ll only take a minute!”

“You stay the fuck in this room, Harris, or I swear to God--”

It’s as far as she gets.

Too late, Chris feels that familiar prickle at the back of his neck, adrenaline surging in his blood as he glimpses a streak of movement from the windows, fogged over shadows:

“HOSTILES!”

The double doors burst open at their backs, and in an instant, chaos unloads. Lickers thrash and bottle-cap at the opening, fighting to claw and hurtle over each other through the opening with gaping jaws. Ramin fumbles for his gun, Harris trips backward, yelping, landing hard on his ass; one of the things leaps, teeth bared, sharp and feral, eyes black. Santos, running toward Harris, doesn’t have time to scream before it hits her.

Phases through her.

Glitches, disappears.

The facility lights snap on.

 _“You are dead,”_ chirps the automated voice over the loudspeakers. “ _You are dead.”_

“Fuck!” yells Santos. She kicks at the plastic screen walls as the laboratory projection flickers and fizzles out, replaced by the BSAA’s simulation room. “Fucking--”

_“You are dead.”_

“Yeah, I got that!”

“Take a walk,” says Chris wearily, pulling off his gas mask, wiping the sweat out of his eyes with a gloved hand. “Harris, clear your head, damn it, in an active area none of you would’ve lasted ten minutes. Ramin, you got sloppy-- you make it to the lab and don’t post a look-out? Evans, I don’t want you arguing with the rookie, I want you doing your fucking job, and Santos--”

“I know!” She chucks her gas mask at the wall, making a beeline for the water cooler. “I know, I know.”

Harris has clambered to his feet, fidgeting with the strap of his helmet, face flushed a deep shade of red. “Captain--”

“You’re gonna have to leave people behind,” Chris snaps at him. “If you can’t stomach that, I suggest you turn in your gun. You pull that logic out on the field and you’re a liability at best, understand?”

He nods, silent, staring at the floor.

“Do you _understand_ me, private?”

“Y-- yes, sir!”

“Then snap out of it.” He turns on his heel, and starts back toward the simulation entry. “You have five minutes, Alpha. Get it together, all of you. We’re doing it again. From the top.”

 

◌◌◌

 

They run the simulation four more times, until Chris is halfway to satisfied. There’s a lot to be said for their learning curve, at the very least. Harris is dead quiet until the end of the session.

The team files out when he calls it, rubbing sore shoulders and stiff necks, shucking off sweat-drenched scrim nets and looking relieved to be allowed off the arena floor. Ramin and Evans tussle their way to the showers, skidding over the bathroom tiles with towels slung over their shoulders; Santos takes her time to catch her breath out on the bench, eyes closed, head tipped back against the wall.

Harris doesn’t seem to be in a particular hurry to be anywhere, staring into his locker dejectedly. Chris feels a faint stab of guilt, watching him from the corner of his eye; he’s not bad, for a rookie. Head-in-the-clouds, sure. Maybe a little caught up in his own ideals— but God knows there’d been a time when Chris had wanted to believe in all that same shit, too.

“Good work today,” he says, offhandedly.

It’s just a peace offering, or at least it’s meant to be— but Harris’s eyes light up, instantly. “Really?” He drops his bag and edges closer; Chris bites back a sigh. “I know it could’ve gone better-- with that thing in the third simulation at Evan’s six, right-- but you came out of nowhere, like, that was incredible--”

“Mhmm,” says Chris.

“Some of the other guys from Delta team were talking about going out for drinks, after everyone’s hit the showers. You know that place down a few blocks from HQ?”

It’s a karaoke bar. And yeah, he knows it-- maybe a little too well. Finn Macauley had knocked back five shots of tequila and sung his heart out to Fleetwood Mac with the team during basic training. “Don’t have too much fun,” he says, sounding painfully old.

“Actually--” Harris fidgets, rubbing the back of his neck. “I thought maybe-- the whole team, I mean-- we all thought, if you wanted to come along...?”

Chris snaps his locker shut.

“Or not,” Harris backtracks, hastily. “Fraternization and everything-- only I heard something about some of the other commanding officers being okay with...you know. That stuff.”

 _Why,_ Chris wants to say, _because Sherry Birkin married her protective detail?_

But the words taste bitter even unspoken, and he tries to shake the feeling. It’s plain envy, mean and misplaced; it isn’t Sherry’s fault that they’d made it out in one piece. Chris can’t fault her for being happy, especially now, with the past set well behind them. He’d even gone to the wedding, it’d been nice. They’d had a big white cake. Vanilla icing. Jake had been almost civil.

Harris is still waiting on an answer, eager as all hell. And Chris has to choke down the part of him that remembers what it was like to be a part of something, the part that remembers Ben Airhart being a chatty lightweight, Andy Walker taking his martinis with four olives. The part that remembers Piers’ head against his shoulder. And the way he’d looked at him after a few drinks: soft-eyed with a slow smile, his hand lingering on Chris’s arm, warm and solid at the small of his back.

Chris smiles, tightly. He claps Harris on the shoulder.

“We’ll see,” he says.

Jill catches him on his way out. She’s back in her civvies, hair tucked behind her ears-- cut short, long-since dyed back to brown. “Hey,” she says, falling into step alongside him. “Got to see the last part of your exercise from the observation room.”

She’s looking at him in a pointed way, like she has more to say about it than she should. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon, spit it out.”

“Nothing! You’re just hard on them.”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s my job, Jill. You think they’re anywhere near ready with the shit they pulled today?”

“I think they’ve got a good teacher,” she says lightly, bumping him with an elbow. “They’ll get there, be patient. They idolize you, Chris.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, rubbing at the back of his neck. It makes him uncomfortable, the glorification; he isn’t sure there’s anything exactly awe-inspiring about most of the things he’s done. “The rookie asked me to the bar again. Wants me to hang out with the team off-duty, be their drinking buddy or whatever.”

“That doesn’t sound like an altogether bad idea.”

He grunts.

“ _Chris_ ,” says Jill, and steps in front of him, one hand on his chest. “I’m serious.”

“So am I! I don’t do that anymore.”

“Have fun?”

“Rub elbows. Fool around before missions.”

“I think you should go,” she says, looking him straight in the eye. “I think you and I should both go. We’ll make small talk, get a few drinks, catch up-- you know, like young people?”

Chris snorts. “We’re not that old, Jill.”

“Speak for yourself! I see a chiropractor on the regular, I can never consider myself young again.”

Barry’s apparently back in town, and Jill texts him an invite too, typing away on her phone as they head out to the garage. Chris has heard from the higher-ups that he might be handed the assignment he’s been pushing for, but there hasn’t been a date set; Jill’s company isn’t looking to be shipped out for at least another month. _What the hell,_ he thinks, easing slowly out of apprehension. He’s certainly got the time to spare. _Why the hell not?_

Their parking spots are side-by-side-- founder perks-- name plates and everything. “I’m buying,” says Jill, tapping a finger against his passenger-side window as he hoists himself up into his Silverado. “Just stay for one beer, no pressure, cross my heart.”

“Fine,” says Chris, and guns the engine. “But just the one.”

 

◌◌◌

 

There’s leftovers in his fridge at home from the night before. He picks at it straight out of the tupperware, toeing off both shoes in the kitchen and throwing his jacket over the back of a chair. It’s a modest kind of place, one he’d only settled into after that last mission. He’d used to stay in extended-stay motels, or rent out short-term between tours, and the decoration borders on spartan, as a result. He doesn’t know exactly what to do with it. The only room in the place that looks honest-to-god lived in is his study, covered in newspaper clippings, manila folders, old files and training plans.

There’s a shadow of something that’s come up, just within the last year-- a half-baked case he’s been digging into with a fixation that he’d thought he’d lost a long time ago. He’d first noticed it in a report of Jill’s: alleged sightings of free agents, out on the edges of active BSAA coordinates. When it had checked out in a few other dispatch statements of soldiers that were stationed around the same area, he’d known he’d been onto something. He’d thought Leon might have heard a rumor or two, and he’s tried a few times to get ahold of him. But Leon’s become almost impossible to find. Either on a case of his own, or in a meeting, or _otherwise occupied,_ as the sharp-eyed, spectacled woman on the Hill likes to put it, whenever Chris hangs around HQ hoping to catch him face-to-face.

All of the places where he's picked up recorded movement have been within the States, and they've all been within active or recently-active BSAA sites. Most of their soldiers misidentify the agents as DSO, but when Chris cross-checks with DSO placements, there’s no overlap. If it’s an Umbrella spy, they’re not very good at their job. It’s technically not a BSAA issue-- but every other department he’s brought it to doesn’t seem to take any interest.

At least the BSAA hasn’t tried to stop him from pursuing it. _Like a dog with a scent,_ Jill had said, when she’d seen the file he’s been compiling. Anyone who knows him knows he can’t help himself, once he’s gotten started. Give him an objective and he’ll see it through. Give him a lead and he’ll follow it, straight to the source.

They’d bred him that way.

He does a little more work before he’s supposed to head out, then shows up at the bar fashionably late in a t-shirt and jeans. Harris spills his drink down his front when he sees Chris walk in and still manages to look like he’s just been handed the sun and stars on a platter; he chats briefly and semi-awkwardly with his team, who all pitch in and do their best to carry the conversation for him, to the best of their ability. They talk about the weather, which is shit and rain. They try not to talk about work, although Chris struggles with that part the most. Jill and Barry buy him that one beer. He downs it in three minutes flat.

He’s nervous, he realizes, of all things. Jill’s right, as usual-- it’s been an embarrassingly long time since he made a real effort to do this. To be off the field, away from the mission. To be in the moment. To let Barry tell every humiliating boot camp story he has in his arsenal. To let Jill kick his ass at the pool table. Santos has the kind of laugh that’s dangerously contagious; Ramin drags Evans up to the karaoke stage for an impromptu _Piano Man_ debut. Harris shoves his hands in his pockets, hesitant and stammering, and offers to buy Chris another beer.

So he has another.

And another, after that.

At some point, Barry buys them all a round of shots--

From there, things get blissfully blurry.

One of the guys from Delta team is up on the karaoke stage, belting a horribly off-key Don McLean ballad. Barry is booing, Jill has her head in her hands-- they’re at a table with Harris and Santos, french fries and grease staining the paper plates heaped between them. Chris doesn’t know how long they’ve been there. It doesn’t really matter, he thinks, happily, nursing a saccharinely-sweet mixer. “Get off the stage!” yells Barry, leaning back in his chair; Jill kicks at him from under the table, and nails Harris in the shin instead.

“Ouch!”

“Shit, sorry!” She grabs his arm, cackling as he rubs at his leg with a sheepish sort of expression. “Sorry!”

Barry cups his hands around his mouth. “You suck!”

_“Barry!”_

The guy squints out at them from under the lights, trailing off in the middle of a verse. “You think you can do any better, asshole?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?” Barry stands up, bumping into Harris as he pushes his chair back. “Hey, rookie, let’s show him how it’s done.”

Harris smiles, sloppily drunk and painfully polite. “Oh, uh-- no thank you, sir--”

Barry drags him out of his seat.

“Go, Harris!” Santos pumps one fist in the air. “This is gonna be priceless--”

Barry hauls her up by her elbow. “Oh, you too, kid.”

They forcibly escort the sour looking McLean-wannabe off the stage; Santos and Barry bicker viciously about what to sing while Harris sways on his feet next to them. Chris watches them fight over who stands where and which one should hold the mic-- then Jill is swimming across his vision, snapping fingers in front of his face. “Chris!”

“Mm?”

“Is that your phone?”

It’s vibrating on the table, face-down. He flips it over and answers, without looking at the screen. “Yeah?”

_“Chris?”_

“Claire!” He stands up-- too fast-- sits down, hard. Then stands again, slower this time, and woozy. “Hey, you!”

“Tell her I say hi,” Jill says, tugging at his wrist.

“Jill says hi!”

_“Jill what?”_

“Jill says--” They’ve started up the music again, something late eighties. Barry’s already trying to wrestle the mic away from an unusually defiant-looking Harris; Chris covers one ear and shouts into the phone, heading toward the back door. “Just a minute!”

_“Is that-- are you listening to Depeche Mode? Where the hell are you?”_

“Out!”

 _“Out,”_ she repeats, sounding amused.

“At a bar!” There’s the squeal of rusty hinges; he stumbles out to the back alley, the night air cool on his skin. “Jill and Barry are here,” he says, after the door creaks shut behind him. “And my team! And karaoke.”

_“Did you lose a bet or something?”_

“Jill says I don’t have fun anymore.”

 _“She said that?”_ She’s laughing. He laughs, too, although he isn’t sure why it’s funny. _“How’s Jill doing?”_

“Good! Brunette!” He sags against the wall, the brick rough against his back. “What’s up?”

_“I just wanted to-- I’m checking in. You’re okay, right?”_

“I’m having fun!”

_“Yeah, I definitely got that part. I meant-- you know…?”_

“Mm?”

_“It’s just...getting to be that time of year.”_

He doesn't get it.

And then he does.

Like cold water to the face-- he blinks rapidly, the world spinning slower around him. “I’m okay,” he says. His voice is rough. It’s just the booze, he’s sure. “It’s been-- it's two years, I’m fine.”

 _“You’re drinking,”_ Claire says, carefully.

“I’m out! I’m with friends!” Chris slides to the ground with a huff, shifting the phone from one hand to the other, legs stretched out in front of him. “I found a bunch of old photos.”

_“Photos?”_

“Photos of me.”

_“What are you talking about?”_

“After China! In his desk-- in an envelope, I mean-- all these really old photos--”

_“Whose desk, Chris?”_

“Piers’,” he says, impatiently.

 _“Ah,”_ says Claire, drawn out with a dawning understanding, something flustered creeping into her voice. _“I forgot I, uh...I sent those to him.”_

“What!” Chris snorts a laugh, head tipped back against the brick. “Why?”

_“He asked for them! I don’t know.”_

“Why didn’t he ask me?”

 _“Chris,”_ says Claire, embarrassed again, but like she’s embarrassed for his sake, this time.

“He could have asked me.”

_“Like that wouldn’t have been weird? ‘Excuse me, sir, but you wouldn’t happen to have your own personal photo album lying around--?’”_

“I don’t know. I don’t know! He was like that, he was weird.”

 _“Oh, big brother,”_ says Claire. He can hear her smiling, but now she sounds stifled, like she’s choked up. _“It’s good to hear you talk about him. You never do.”_

Chris swallows, the pit of his chest going leaden and cold, and heavy. He’s not sure what there is to say. Nothing that he’s willing to say-- nothing, at least, that he hasn’t said before. “Sorry. Sorry, I know.”

_“I’m glad you’re having fun, okay?”_

“Okay.”

_“And please take a cab home, all right?”_

“Okay!" And because he’s drunk, and because he doesn’t say it as often as he should, ”I love you.”

 _“I-- love you too.”_ The smile is in her voice. _“Stay safe, you hear me? And be careful.”_

"I will be," says Chris. "I always am."

Claire laughs.

 _“That’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one,”_ she says.

 

◌◌◌

 

The noise from the bar is muffled from the alley, the music blaring over the speakers just a soft thrum. But while it’s tempting to sit out back for the rest of the night with his own thoughts and the cool air, Chris manages to scrape himself together enough to stand, and amble back inside. Barry, Santos, and Harris seem to have yielded the stage and moved back to the comfort of their drinks, Santos’s arm slung around Harris’s shoulders, Barry gesturing wildly with his hands while he talks. Ramin and Evans are debating wildly about something in a dark corner, heads bent together; Jill has wandered off to her own squad, ruffling her specialist's hair, stealing a sip of his beer.

Chris watches them all, for a moment. Oddly displaced, separate-- as though he's not there at all, or as if he's watching it from far away, another room. Sometimes he feels like the world is turning without him. Stuck in limbo while the people around him move on, cycling back to a time that's long-since passed him by, waiting for a reset button. Waiting to set things right again, to find a way to live without closure. To live unfinished.

But he also might just be drunk.

There's an exchange of keys as Chris says his goodbyes, a flurry of sloppy handshakes. Jill and Barry had driven together, so depending on who sobers up first, one of them will take his car and swing by to drop his truck off in the morning— for tonight, he takes Claire’s advice, and hails a cab. At the end of a drinking binge like this, he’s usually sleepy enough to want to pass out with his shoes still on, but on the drive back to his place he finds himself wide awake. That doesn’t change by the time he manages to unlock his front door, the green-numbered clock on the oven reading _12:28._ He eats more leftovers, cold. He drinks a glass of water and brushes his teeth half-heartedly, his mind a million miles away. Underwater again. Before China again, thinking of the last cab he’d been in, Piers sitting close next to him. Thighs pressed together. Piers’ hand on his knee.

He’s a little less inebriated. He’s definitely not tired. It’s just past 1:00 and he goes into his study, shuffling around papers and clearing out the old coffee mugs that have started to pile up, leaving folders with ringed dried stains. It’s a little before 1:30 and he kicks off his jeans next to the bed, and turns off the light, and lies on top of the covers, late June heat sticky and dense.

Staring up at the ceiling can only hold a guy’s interest for so long. He starts counting J’avo to sleep, continuing to do everything but sleep. His phone is face-down on the table next to his bed and eventually he sighs and caves and scrolls for a half hour-- through news reports, emails, twitter feeds. It’s almost exactly 2:00 by the time Buzzfeed quizzes start to sound like a good idea.

It’s 2:30 by the time he wonders if Piers’ old cell number still works.

But that’s a little too pathetic, even for him. So he turns over instead, and buries his face in his pillow.

Then he turns over again.

** _0235_ **

to: piers 

> body: _hey_

He stares at the little word for ten long seconds after hitting _send,_ gripping the phone so hard that he half expects it to crack _._ Then he cusses, and tosses his phone onto his nightstand.

That’s it, he thinks. That’s it, that’s enough.

He’ll just--

** _0239_ **

to: piers  

> body: _never said goodbye so i guess this is it_

** _0240_ **

to: piers  

> body: _never got to say a lot of things_

It's almost three and he can already feel the hangover coming on, a dull throbbing spreading behind the center of his skull. The screen brightness isn’t helping, a white supernova in the black of his bedroom. He squeezes his eyes shut and scrubs at his forehead with the heel of his hand. Feeling stupid. Feeling bitter, two years, no closure.

“That’s enough,” he says, out loud this time; he opens his eyes.

And sees movement on the screen.

A flicker, three dots, like someone is typing on the other end. It vanishes, almost as quickly as it had appeared, and Chris, his heartbeat spiking in his throat, wonders if he’s really gone off the deep end, this time-- hope does strange things to a person, after all, and--

His phone buzzes in his hand.

** _0255_ **

from: piers

> body: _44.741182”N -74.696515”W_

** _0255_ **

from: piers 

> body: _attachment: filecvmpaf_homecoming.yuv_

**Author's Note:**

> [find me on tumblr](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com/)


End file.
